Changing their spots, the Black Keys—Pat Carney and Dan Auerbach (foreground)—embraced collaboration full-on for their new album, with the tongue-in-cheek title Ohio Players.
You know that feeling you get when you find a hundred-dollar bill on the ground? That jolt of joy that makes a bad day better and a good day even more awesome? That’s the feeling I get when I hear the new Black Keys album, Ohio Players. Except, in some ways it’s more like stumbling on a diamond.
There are so many facets and reflections, so many angles beaming influences and ideas … and it’s clearly the product of time—a work Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney say they could not have completed earlier in their partnership, although there has been lots of groundwork along the way.
“It’s amazing to be 20 years into our career and have a new trick to be able to do, which is collaboration,” says Auerbach, when asked about the sprawl of styles and the roster of mighty contributors—including Noel Gallagher and Beck—on Ohio Players. “That’s kind of the key to most people’s success throughout musical history, but we’ve shied away from it, extremely. Now, it’s lit a fire under our asses, and the possibilities feel endless.
“Pat and I are at the point in our careers where we feel like letting other people into our space. We never used to be.”—Dan Auerbach
“We were just too insecure back in there,” he continues. “But now we’ve produced enough records, we’ve worked with enough people, so it’s really fun for us. Pat and I are at the point in our careers where we feel like letting other people into our space. We never used to be. And at the same time, our own relationship is tighter than it’s ever been.”
The Black Keys - Beautiful People (Stay High) ("Official" Video)
Revisiting the Black Keys’ first two albums, The Big Come Up and Thickfreakness, it’s hard to imagine they would become an international juggernaut and that Auerbach, their singer and guitarist, would evolve into one of the most interesting players, producers, and songwriters in modern American music. After all, the duo’s initial recordings were raw as uncooked bacon—recorded in a basement in Akron, Ohio, with mics bought on eBay—and their repertoire bridged garage rock and a style, cultivated by North Mississippi hill country rural bluesmen Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside, that’s so rough and thunderous that even some hardcore fans of that genre had difficulty comprehending it.
But Auerbach and Carney’s intelligence, empathy, and history as collaborators might be more apparent to their fans than it seemingly was, at least until this album got underway a few years ago, to them. Starting with 2008’s Attack & Release, they’ve worked with Danger Mouse as a producer and co-writer; Mos Def, Ludacris, Q-Tip, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, RZA, and other hip-hop luminaries on their 2009 Blakroc album; North Mississippi firebrands Kenny Brown and Eric Deaton on 2021’s blues payback Delta Kream; even Billy Gibbons and Sierra Ferrell on 2022’s raucous Dropout Boogie. And Auerbach’s co-op rock band, the Arcs, recorded two acclaimed albums and toured the world, while his second solo recording, 2017’s Waiting on a Song, was a spelunk into the heart of his adopted hometown Nashville’s studio history, drawing on a cross-generational cast of legendary session players. Then, there’s the guitarist’s football-field-long production credits, ranging from the Black Diamond Heavies to Dr. John and Grace Potter to La Luz to CeeLo Green to Marcus King to Hermanos Guitiérrez to Robert Finley and Yola.
“We got to this maturity as a band where not only can we call these friends, but we can deliver music our idols want to play on.”—Pat Carney
Sometimes, when you’re in the forest, all you can see are the trees. But now, after all that experience, the Black Keys’ omnivorous tastes, ceaseless drive, and undeniable success tilted their creative compass and comfort zone to Ohio Players, which might be poetically described as an album of peace, soul, and thunder. Also, eclectic and skillful af. Here, Auerbach and his drumming buddy have evolved what sounds like a mastery of every genre they’ve chosen to assimilate over the years: blues, jazz, country, classic pop, rock in its old and new variants, soul, hip-hop … even ambient music. Spend 20 minutes listening to the anthemic chords of “On the Game,” a co-write with Noel Gallagher; the fuzz fests “Paper Crown” and “Everytime You Leave,” the latter co-written with Beck; the psychedelic hip-hop-pop of “Candy and Her Friends;” and the period-perfect reworking of William Bell’s 1968 Stax hit “Forgot to Be Your Lover,” and you’ll get lost in the vibe—a happy time traveler through roots-informed music’s past and present.
The band’s new release was made at the same time as they were creating their last few albums, with Dan Auerbach and Pat Carney collecting the results of their collaboration wish list.
The album’s other spark plugs include hip-hop-beat brainiac and producer Dan the Automator; Memphis rap legends Juicy J (of Three 6 Mafia) and Lil Noid; producer/guitarist Angelo Petraglia, who’s made records with Kings of Leon and many others; and Nashville session hero Tom Bukovac, a truly estimable guitarist.
Of course, the biggest surprise is Gallagher, who co-wrote three rockers for Ohio Players, lending his patently anthemic touch. As it turns out, Gallagher is a big Black Keys fan, and in 2009, the duo were invited to open for his former band, Oasis. “But we were busy,” Carney says, “and they broke up.”
Despite a four-year hiatus from 2015 to 2019, the Black Keys stayed busy—even separately, during that break. They resumed making Black Keys albums in 2018, with ‘Let’s Rock’, and while they were creating its two successive releases, Auerbach and Carney also launched the series of collaborations that yielded Ohio Players.
“We had this epiphany—we can call our friends to help us make music,” Carney says. “It’s funny because we both write songs with other people, but we got to this maturity as a band where not only can we call these friends, but we can deliver music our idols want to play on.”“Noel Gallagher was feeling inspired because he hadn’t recorded like that. It’s not really common to have zero baffles between the vocals and the drums.”—Dan Auerbach
The first call was to Beck—a major influence on Auerbach and Carney when they were growing up in Akron. “His aesthetic was incredible,” Auerbach says. “He wore his influences on his sleeve, and we learned from that. There was someone showing us a way to go.” Beck was also an early Black Keys fan, and took them on tour in 2003. He is on half of Ohio Players’ 14 tracks as a writer, vocalist, guitarist, and keys player.“
After we’d gotten Beck in the studio, we were throwing names back and forth—‘Who else would be meaningful and write big songs we like?,’” says Auerbach. “Noel was at the top of the list.” The Keys’ manager, and even Gallagher’s team, when initially approached, responded that the former Oasis co-leader simply doesn’t co-write. “But we got a message back a few days later that said he’d be down if we came to London. We didn’t know if it was going to work, but after we recorded one song the first day, it took all our nervousness away.” By the end of a week, they had three numbers for Ohio Players.
Dan Auerbach's Gear
Dan Auerbach plays one of his original Supros in concert in 2023. He has a collection of vintage guitars, including instruments owned by Hound Dog Taylor and Mississippi Fred McDowell.
Photo by Jordi Vidal
Guitars
- 1960 Fender Telecaster Deluxe
- 1965 Teisco Del Rey ET-300
- Gibson J-45
- Danelectro Vincent Bell Signature Coral Firefly
Amp
- 1950s narrow-panel tweed Deluxe
Effects
- Analog Man Sun Face
- Marshall SupaFuzz
- Fulltone Octafuzz
- Vintage flanger
- Strymon El Capistan
- Xotic RC Booster
- Custom fuzz (gift from Pat Carney)
Picks, Strings, & Slides
- National metal finger pick
- Custom picks
- SIT .011 sets
- Brass slide
“That was amazing on a lot of levels,” Auerbach continues. “It was fun as hell. We’d really wanted to go to Toe Rag Studios in London and record there. Toe Rag is such an amazing studio. It’s one room, no vocal booths or anything like that—smaller than a single-car garage. [The all-analog space is where Wolf Alice, Tame Impala, the Kills, James Hunter, Hugh Cornwell, and many others have recorded.] Pat’s got a drum kit, I’m on guitar, and Noel’s playing his ES-335 most of the time, with Leon Michaels on this weird little German ’60s keyboard, and [engineer] Liam Watson behind the old, beautiful desk.”
After the sessions, Auerbach and Carney dubbed Gallagher “the chord lord.” “He would sit there and cycle through chords until he found that one that worked with mine,” Auerbach recounts. The songs they cut, “On the Game,” “Only Love Matters,” and “You’ll Pay,” were essentially recorded live, with additions—like Bukovac’s guitar—done at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville. “Every time we listened to a playback, it sounded so good that it was inspiring, and Noel was feeling inspired because he hadn’t recorded like that before. It’s not really common to have zero baffles between the vocals and the drums. We were just going for it.”
“I definitely tend to classic sounds, and then it’s nice to be able to move from there, finding new ways to use them.”—Dan Auerbach
If anything, collaborators like Gallagher and Beck have amplified the Black Keys’ already impressive way with hooks and choruses—reinforced as usual by Auerbach’s guitar, which, regardless of musical setting, always seems rooted in the tones of the ’60s and ’70s.
“I definitely tend to classic sounds,” he says, “and then it’s nice to be able to move from there, finding new ways to use them. But just being able to find that classic sound has always been thrilling. It’s finding the right fuzz pedal or finding the right combination of things that make that magic that’s on all of this stuff.”
On their most recent major tour, the Black Keys hit the road as a sextet. “Our band is so capable,” says Auerbach. “The guys that we’ve been touring with sing and play percussion and keyboards, so we can recreate anything, which is awesome.”
Photo by Debi Del Grande
Fuzz has long been an important element of Auerbach’s sound, and it expands the dimensions of “Please Me (Till I’m Satisfied),” “Paper Crown,” and others. Auerbach primarily used three fuzz pedals on Ohio Players: an Analog Man Sun Face, Marshall SupaFuzz, and Fulltone Octafuzz—sometimes in combination, mostly driving a narrow-panel tweed Deluxe when he was on home turf at Easy Eye. But there’s plenty of sweet stuff in the grooves, too. In particular, the cover of “Forgot to Be Your Lover” enjoys not only a sweeping string arrangement but a lovely, chiming phase-shifted guitar that pairs perfectly with Auerbach’s near-falsetto vocal—another element of his singing that he’s perfected over time. (“My family would sing bluegrass, with all those falsetto parts, so it never felt out of the realm of possibility for me—although I never had the balls to do that until we made the Blakroc album, and we were messing around and experimenting,” he notes.) “Forgot to Be Your Lover” was done at Valentine Recording Studios in Los Angeles, a room frozen in time, left exactly as it was after its last remodeling in 1975—a place perfect for the track’s old-school vibe.
With its intuitive intersections of locations, collaborators, and the Black Keys’ realization of the strength of their own artistry, maybe there was some Zen at work during the Ohio Players sessions. And perhaps beyond. As we end our conversation, Auerbach offers an anecdote: “I was just making a record with Early James yesterday, in a friend’s hundred-plus-years-old home. As I was getting ready to record, my friend said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this guitar in a case here. Your friend dropped it off for you a couple years ago. He couldn’t get ahold of you or something.’ It was an old Supro Res-O-Glass that I had bought in Akron and completely forgotten about. I had loaned it to somebody 10 years ago. We took it out of the case. The strings on it were prehistoric, rusty, and we plugged it into a little black-panel Champ, and James played slide guitar on it, and it’s got a little Airline pickup. God! It sounded so amazing. And it was just like all kinds of wrong—hadn’t seen a luthier in a decade. You know what I mean? But it was the perfect thing for the sound that we were looking for. The perfect thing.”
YouTube It
On October 9, 2023, the Black Keys threw a blues party at Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl, digging into their North Mississippi hill country sonic roots with Magnolia State ringers Kenny Brown on guitar and Eric Deaton on bass. Here, they play “Fireman Ring the Bell,” a variation on the “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” theme by the late R.L. Burnside.
- Rig Rundown: The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach ›
- Beyond Blues: The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach ›
- Rig Rundown: The Black Keys [2019] ›
- How We Choose the Guitarists and Artists We Cover ›
Reader: Federico Novelli
Hometown: Genoa, Italy
Guitar: The Italian Hybrid
Reader Federico Novelli constructed this hybrid guitar from three layers of pine, courtesy of some old shelves he had laying around.
A few years ago, at the beginning of Covid, an idea for a new guitar flashed through my mind. It was a semi-acoustic model with both magnetic and piezo pickups that were mounted on a soundboard that could resonate. It was a nice idea, but I also had to think about how to make it in my tiny cellar without many power tools and using old solid-wood shelves I had available.
I have been playing guitar for 50 years, and I also dabble in luthiery for fun. I have owned a classical guitar, an acoustic guitar, and a Stratocaster, but a jazz guitar was missing from the list. I wanted something that would have more versatility, so the idea of a hybrid semi-acoustic guitar was born.
I started to sketch something on computer-aided design (CAD) software, thinking of a hollowbody design without a center block or sides that needed to be hot-worked with a bending machine. I thought of a construction made of three layers of solid pine wood, individually worked and then glued together in layers, with a single-cutaway body and a glued-in neck.
For the soundboard and back, I used a piece of ash and hand-cut it with a Japanese saw to the proper thickness, so I had two sheets to fit together. Next, I sanded the soundboard and bottom using two striker profiles as sleds and an aluminum box covered in sandpaper to achieve a uniform 3 mm thickness. A huge amount of work, but it didn't cost anything.
“It was a nice idea, but I also had to think about how to make it in my tiny cellar without many electric tools and out of old solid-wood shelves I had available.”
The soundboard has simplified X-bracing, a soundhole with a rosewood edge profile, and an acoustic-style rosewood bridge. For the neck, I used a piece of old furniture with straight grain, shaped it to a Les Paul profile, and added a single-action truss rod. The only new purchase: a cheap Chinese rosewood fretboard.
Then, there was lots of sanding. I worked up to 400-grit, added filler, primer, and transparent nitro varnish, worked the sandpaper up to 1,500-grit, and finally polished.
Our reader and his “Italian job.”
For electronics, I used a Tonerider alnico 2 humbucker pickup and a piezo undersaddle pickup, combined with a modified Shadow preamp that also includes a magnetic pickup input, so you can mix the two sources on a single output. I also installed a bypass switch for power on/off and a direct passive output.
I have to say that I am proud and moderately satisfied both aesthetically and with the sounds it produces, which range from jazz to acoustic and even gypsy jazz. However, I think I will replace the electronics and piezo with Fishman hardware in the future.
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I bet you saw yourself in the opening scene of Twenty-Four-and-Three-Quarter-Inches of Woe, which may be the title of the screenplay I just started to write, most likely due to the fact that you’ve made a similarly boneheaded mistake with your instrument.
Unfortunately, my storytelling skills didn’t save a nice new Epiphone Casino from sliding off my amp, meeting the floor, and earning some damage on the way down. Yeah, that’s a true story, and I’m sure something similar has happened to you as well. It can happen to anyone who plays guitar for long enough, but there’s no need for despair yet.
If you’ve been victimized by gravity like I have, as long as the damage isn’t major, you can fix a lot of things yourself. I’ll use my felled Casino as an example. It suffered a loosened tuner, an input jack that fell inside the guitar, a damaged fret, and a few dents in the finish. While I work, I’ll provide some suggestions for supplies and tools to keep in your home repair kit, just in case you ever need them.
Tools for the Tasks
We ordered all of the tools we used in these repairs, excluding the painter’s tape and the toothpicks, which we picked up during lunch at Jack’s Bar-B-Que, from StewMac.
The essentials:
• ESP Multi Spanner
• Archtop Guitar Helping Hand
• Guitar Tech Screwdriver Set
• 3 Corner Fret Dressing Files
• Ultra Thin Master Glue
• GluBoost Fill n’ Finish
• Rectangular Sanding Kit
Can’t Tune It like That
First, let’s take care of the loose tuner, since it’s currently in no shape to reliably hold string tension. The tumble knocked it sideways, which loosened the screws holding in the key, which caused the wood around the screws to strip. It’s alarming to see, but this is a very simple fix.
Add to Repair Kit: Round toothpicks, water-thin CA glue, glue applicator tips, safety goggles
[Note: For the unfamiliar, CA is short for cyanoacrylate. It’s commonly referred to as “Super Glue,” but since that is a brand name, not the generic, I’ll refer to it here as “CA glue.”]
First, remove the tuner by backing the screws out, then pull the tuner from the headstock. My Casino’s tuning keys use a press-in bushing to hold the post straight in the headstock, so no further disassembly is required. However, if you experience this issue with a guitar with more modern-styled tuning keys, you’ll need to use an appropriately sized wrench or socket to remove the screw-in bushing before removing the key.
Next, break a toothpick in half, insert the thicker end into the hole where your mounting screw used to be. Break it off flush with the surface, and repeat the process with the other hole.
Safety goggles on: It’s CA glue time. Trust me, you do not want to squirt this stuff into your eye. Fit an applicator tip to the glue bottle and practice your squeeze on a scrap piece of paper or wood, far away from anything you don’t want glued to your guitar or yourself. This stuff is magic—it will bond things you never intended if you aren’t careful.
All you need is a very small drop, so practice until you can confidently flow out just a small controlled amount. Once you’ve mastered that, drop a small amount of water-thin CA glue into each filled hole. It will soak through the toothpick into the surrounding wood just enough for this quick fix. Let it cure for at least 15 minutes, but longer is even better.
Pop the tuner back in and drive the screws straight into the toothpick-filled holes. The screw will compress the toothpick into the existing wood and create new threads strong enough to hold your tuner in place.
Congratulations! You fixed it well enough to at least make it through a session. I’ve done this on several guitars that lasted years with no issues, so you should be confident in your work.
Hit the Road, Jack
Look, there’s no way to sugarcoat this. Fishing an output jack out of a hollowbody guitar is a pain. You can do this. All you need is patience and a few handy gadgets.
Add to Repair Kit: flashlight, multi-spanner, small drywall anchor, “helping hand,” small screwdriver
Your first task is to locate the jack inside the guitar. Odds are it didn’t fall far away from where it needs to be, since it’s probably wired to one of your control potentiometers. Use your flashlight to shine some light inside the f-hole to help find it.
I found mine wedged against the treble side of the rim, a little farther away than I can reach with my fingers. This is not zesty. I am unhappy but equipped and determined.
The tool I described as a “helping hand” becomes useful here. It’s essentially just a bent hook at the end of a handle made out of pliable heavy wire. Several guitar parts suppliers sell something similar. I got mine from StewMac for a reasonable price, but if you want to be thrifty about it, there’s no reason why you can’t cut and bend a wire coat hanger.
Take a few deep breaths, and working through the f-hole, use the hook end of your helping hand to gently pull the output jack back toward where it was mounted. Bend the helping hand however needed to reach the jack as easily as possible.
I managed to pull the jack back enough to put a small screwdriver through the jack’s mounting hole and then through the jack itself. That screwdriver will act as a guide while I lift the jack back into place with the helping hand.
You should expect this will take several attempts. Try not to get frustrated. With enough patience, you’ll be able to get the jack back where it belongs. Once you have the jack in place, carefully thread the washer and nut back onto the jack. It shouldn’t take much effort to thread it back on. Just be careful not to cross-thread the nut.
Now that the nut is threaded on enough so it won’t fall back in, the challenge is to tighten it without twisting the jack itself to avoid breaking any wires. I’ve seen and used a few different methods to accomplish this, but I came across one recently that I really like.
This is where you’ll use your drywall anchor. Get one small enough to fit inside the jack without using too much force, then tighten the screw in the anchor so that it spreads to fit tightly inside the jack. This will hold it steady enough to tighten the nut with a multi-spanner tool or an appropriately-sized wrench.
I like a multi-spanner for this job, because it’s always the right size and is slim enough to not be clumsy for operations like this. Like the helping hand, lots of suppliers sell something similar using different names. Mine is made by ESP and also arrived in my StewMac tool box. I use it all the time for all sorts of tasks.
Once the nut is tightened, unscrew the drywall anchor, remove it, and test the jack for sound by plugging your guitar into an amp. A positive result should be obvious at this point, but if you don’t hear any signal, or an excessive consistent buzz, get in touch with your local repair tech.
Got a Dent In My Fret, Man
Honestly, face-first is probably the best way a guitar like my Casino could have hit the ground. The damage could’ve been far worse. Check any forum for endless complaints about Gibson/Epiphone headstock breaks. But I do need to address some damage to a fret caused during the fall.
The issue here is that plain steel electric guitar strings—like your G, B, and E strings—are considerably harder than most frets (my stainless steel fret contingency, put your hands down and let me finish), so it’s possible for a string to leave a small sharp dent in a fret if you hit it with enough force. This specific issue might go unnoticed until it’s time to bend a note at that fret, then you’ll feel and hear the string catch it. No good.
Before we get started: Having allof your frets carefully levelled, recrowned, and polished is alwaysa better solution than partially levelling just a few frets. But considering the entire premise we’ve constructed, which is a situation where we just want the guitar back in action relatively quickly, a partial fret level on the upper frets is perfectly fine as long as it’s done carefully.
Add to Repair Kit: Crowning file (three-corner or rounded), assortment of sandpaper (400 grit to 800 should be fine), 0000 extra-fine steel wool (optional), fretboard conditioner, permanent marker.
First thing we need to do is identify which frets need the work. Let’s say you have a nick in your 17th fret on the treble side under the B string. The goal is to bring the height of that damaged fret and all the frets past it down until the nick disappears. After that, remove the strings before you begin working.
To accomplish this, mark the damaged frets and all frets past it with a permanent marker. A trusty black Sharpie works great for this, but any darker color works fine. For this repair, we only need to work on the treble side of the frets, so that’s all you need to focus on. Also, use some blue painter’s marking tape to protect the area of the guitar near where you will be working. Small slips of a file or sandpaper can cause some nasty injuries to the guitar’s surface.
Next, level the damaged fret and all frets past it (moving toward the bridge) with something stiff enough to not flex under pressure. I keep an old credit card—a nice sturdy one—with a bit of 400-grit sandpaper glued to one side along the shorter edge, 800 grit on the other side. Start with the 400 and work your way down, being careful not to use too much pressure. Let the sandpaper do the work.
You’ll notice the ink is removed as you sand. The way to make sure you’re keeping everything level is to stop frequently and observe the new clean areas on top of each fret. Each one should be about the same width.
This will take a while. A 400-grit sandpaper does not remove material quickly, 800 grit even less so. I’m suggesting this technique because working slowly makes it more difficult to get yourself in trouble. Several suppliers sell mini files for spot leveling, but I don’t recommend starting there because they remove fret material pretty aggressively.
Eventually you’ll notice the little divot in your 17th fret is almost gone. Now’s time to switch to 800 grit to finish the job. You guessed correctly: This will take even longer, but it’ll leave a nice finish without removing any more material than necessary.
Great! Now you have five flat-topped frets. That won’t sound very good, so now you need to re-crown them, giving them a rounded profile to match the other frets. I like to use a 3-corner file to slowly round over each side of the fret, working from the fretboard up, but if you feel like dropping some serious flow on a specialized crowning file, this job can be a lot easier. Be sure to get the marker back out, ink up each fret, and stop filing when just a tiny sliver of ink is left on top of each fret.
Use a piece of 800 grit paper to remove any file marks and smooth out each fret. If you have finer grits, you could work your way up to 1200 or so, but don’t go too hard or you could undo your work. You just want the frets clean and smooth. At this point, I like the way frets feel after a quick buff with 0000 steel wool, but the mess left behind does rightfully deter a lot of repair techs. If you opt in for this, be sure to tape off your pickups and consider finding a second location for this step.
Work in some fretboard conditioner if you like (skip it if you have a maple or synthetic board; no need for that here), put some new strings on, and check your work. Play every note on these frets, to make sure they ring out without any buzzes. It may not look perfect, but as long as the guitar sounds good, you’re okay until it’s time for a full level/crown/polish job.
Not Finished Until It’s, Uh, Finished
Now for the last souvenir from my Casino’s short journey to the floor. I noticed a few spots along the rim of the guitar where the finish was damaged. Specifically, it looks like the guitar hit something with an edge on the way down hard enough to put a couple of jagged dents in it, right along the binding.
Funny, that’s actually what binding is intended for–protecting edges and corners from damage. Anyway, we need to discuss a few things about guitar finishes.
For the purpose of this article, I’m only going to discuss repairs to the clear coat, since that’s where my damage is. Most guitars now are finished using polyurethane or lacquer for the top clear-coat layer.
Speaking verygenerally, lacquer finishes are softer and less durable, which makes hiding repairs a lot easier if you have the skills and patience. Polyurethane finishes are hard and tough in every way: hard to damage and tough to hide repairs regardless of skills or patience.
I happen to know that my formerly mint-condition Casino has a polyurethane finish, which means I’m going to lower my expectations with this repair. Instead of trying to make it look like it never happened, which will take a lot of work, I’ll just try to keep it from getting worse over time, which will take considerably less work.
It also means I won’t be discussing how to repair lacquer finishes, which is a bit more in-depth, requires a lot more patience and practice, and is therefore not really recommended for the average DIY’er—at least not in the scope of this piece. So if your guitar has a lacquer finish, I don’t think this part applies. Let someone else take care of it, or maybe skip this part and learn to love your guitar as is. The latter is still an admirable move.
Add to Repair Kit: Nothing! You already have what you need from the previous repairs. Feel good about that.
Since the damage is a pronounced dent with sharp edges in the clear coat, all I really need to do is seal it with an appropriate material. And the material appropriate for repairing polyurethane finishes is—you guessed it—CA glue, because it dries hard, clear, and quickly, much like polyurethane.
Step one: Use painter’s masking tape around the area of the damage, just in case the glue runs when applied. Step two: Put glue on the dented finish. CA glue will fill in all the small cracks within the damage and seal the existing finish. Be careful; use the smallest-drop-possible technique you perfected when fixing the tuning peg, and give it plenty of time to dry.
That’s it. That’s all I need to keep the finish from continuing to chip the more I play it. Yes, I saved the easiest one for last, as a little treat.
Obviously, this isn’t a particularly beautiful repair, so I could go above and beyond by using thicker CA glue—for example, GluBoost Fill n’ Finish—to fill it in completely, sand it level, and polish the area back to the original mirror gloss. Dan Erlewine has a few excellent YouTube videos outlining this exact method that are easy to find, and I encourage you to try if you’re so inclined. But for my purposes, this will do.
Accidents will happen if you’re actually playing your guitar, but they’re no cause for panic when they do. Even though the guitar isn’t perfect anymore, it’s perfectly playable, and I can get by with it for now. I broke it, so I fixed it, which is something I hope you feel empowered to do should you break yours.
Next time, I’ll use a good guitar stand.
